A Reaganesque moment in Englewood

Mitt Romney’s team arranged a beautiful moment of Reaganesque stagecraft yesterday in Englewood, Colorado. If you’ve heard Romney’s stump speech, you know he has incorporated a story about an American flag that was rescued from the Challenger disaster. Romney’s anecdote derives from his involvement with the Boy Scouts.

NBC’s Garrett Haake picks up the story from there: “Retelling the tale of a Boy Scout group’s flag — thought lost in the Challenger space shuttle explosion, but later recovered unharmed and returned to them — Romney invited a special guest out onstage: Maj. William Tolbert, the US Air Force officer and scoutmaster from Monument, Colorado who figures so prominently in the story, carrying the flag itself, encased in glass.” (Romney seems to have forgotten to mention Tolbert’s name. Thanks to Haake and to the Los Angeles Times’s Maeve Reston for supplying it.)

“That,” said Romney as Tolbert stood beside him and the crowd cheered its approval, “is a great flag, representing the greatest nation in the history of the earth.”